Behind Door number 18, a star is given.
December 18, 2025
I look forward to decorating the Christmas tree every year. This love was instilled in me by my mother. When my siblings and I were little, she would buy us each a Christmas ornament so that we’d have our own collections when we fledged. Each of us had a box with our name on it. On the side of the box was a sheet of paper with a list of the ornaments and the year it was added to the collection. It was a great idea that helped us remember Christmases past as we grew up.
Every year I got a new “favorite” ornament. Until the year I got the ornament that would never lose the title.
My first Christmas as a newly minted teenager, my mother decided I was old enough to collect ornaments that were more fragile than the wood, metal, and fabric ones in my box. I opened a small package, and to my delight this star ornament lay carefully swaddled in the tissue. I was entranced. My mother told me she had found it in little shop while she was antiquing one day and knew I’d love it. That was an understatement.
The ornament is made of tubes of glass strung on wire to form the star. Colorful glass beads decorate the center of the star and the end of each point. My mother explained that all she knew about it was that it was old, eastern European, and very fragile. I have since learned that it was made in the 1930s in Gablonz (Jablonec nad Nisou) in what is now the Czech Republic. Her thoughtful gift sparked a lifelong interest and an extensive collection of antique glass ornaments that I maintain to this day.
Our Christmas tree looks like a magical, explosion of colored glass. I’ll share photos of it another time. For now, I want to focus on this beautiful interpretation of the Christmas star from so long ago. The star that let the world know that a child lay in a manger. The star that led sages across a desert. The star that would herald salvation. My star may not be as significant as its inspiration, but it did, in turn, inspire my love for beautiful, handmade things.
Every year when I carefully unwrap my star, I think of the person, long ago, who carefully wired the glass rods and beads and bent them into the star that I hold today. As I hang it on the tree, I am thankful for my mother who loves me like no one else.
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